


Home

by evanescentlester



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: (kind of not really oops), M/M, Phan - Freeform, Phan Fluff, Phanfiction, Romance, TATINOF, Tour Fic, about phil, and stuff, it's basically just dan waffling for 1.5k, probably not, prose, so what's not to love, will i ever learn how to tag things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7285378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanescentlester/pseuds/evanescentlester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the intricacies of dan howell's thoughts on a sleepless night.<br/>(or, it's two in the morning, the air conditioning in the tour bus is broken and dan can't sleep)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

You're nearly always the one to fall asleep first.

Maybe we're lulled to sleep by the hum of the engine of our tour bus; maybe we're in some sleezy motel in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles from home where a serial killer could burst in and murder us at any moment, and maybe we're home, drifting off in the barely quiet of a London night. 

None of that matters to me anyway, where we are – it doesn't matter whether the sheets we sleep underneath are checked monochrome or bold blue and green, and whether it's eleven (because we have to pretend to be adults in the morning) or three because of an accidental anime binge or a Mario Kart marathon. We can be halfway across the world (which, coincidentally, we just so happen to be) and I wouldn't care – I'd have you, I have you, and that's enough for me.

You are nearly always the one to fall asleep first, and that means I've become oh-so dependent on the calm of the steady rise and fall of your chest, just like I've become oh-so-dependant on you. We've wondered often enough whether that should worry us, our co-dependency, but I'll stutter some romantic waffle with some form of sentimental silver lining and then make a joke to ruin the moment before I kiss you again. I have no intentions of ever living without you, Phil Lester.

(Maybe that should worry us, but I think that should mostly worry you.)

And if you're nearly always the one to fall asleep first, then I'm nearly always the one to lie awake for hours long after the sky has been lazily streaked with charcoal as black as your hair and just as deserving to be embellished with constellations of silver stars.  
The ceilings of wherever I sleep only seem to hold existential dread and hollow feelings for me, but when my lullaby is the muffled, steady beat of your heart next to mine in our own little sporadic rhythm, everything else falls away.

(And yes, the way you're somehow made of sunbeams darkens my nights when you're not here, but it brightens my entire world when you are, and I think I can live with that.)

It's strange how I always used to stumble my way to the early hours of the morning by the synthetic light of my laptop screen; now I have a much brighter light to illuminate my life. In fact, now I get to sleep next to you almost every night, those nights are reserved for spontaneous Tumblr scrolling and the odd Wikipedia odyssey. On the rare days I do manage to find my way into the murky depths of 4am and casual questionings of existence, I now have other things to calm me down.

Maybe that's me, that's us growing up (to me, you could never be almost thirty, it can't have almost been seven years since we began – the numbers just don't add up, or maybe I just don't want to believe it because part of me wants us to still be eighteen & twenty-two and making out every second we could steal away, every moment we could find). Maybe it reminds me of sleepless nights so long ago between locked doors and piercing silences, something we've both tried so very hard to put behind us.

I still stumble over the word boyfriend, sometimes, like it's crossing a line even though it's one that's long since faded. There are so many nights, even now, when I obsess over us - how many people have asked us if we're together over all these years, and how many different answers have we given? 

How many countless labels have countless people known us by – best friends, lovers, soulmates, partners, flatmates, boyfriends and exes, even for the most short-lived of moments? How many times have people tried to define us when what I have with you is nothing short of indefinable?

And then there's the look - there's this particular look some of our newer friends give us soon after we make them. They've heard the stories, seen the edits, scrolled through social media to see thousands of crazed and frantic keyboard smashes over a single look. It's a side glance of curiosity, a half-whisper of "are they...together?" to the person next to them who's guess is as good as theirs. 

I used to despise that look, panic binding my chest and tightening the makeshift iron walls around my heart as I watched someone decide what label they were going to give me, give us. Now it just makes me laugh.

To me, we don't need a label. To me, you're Phil, the greatest thing that's ever happened to me, the sun and all the stars to my moon. The clumsy, nerdy dork with a habit for getting himself into awkward situations with weird people, and the guy I fell in love with through a computer screen all those years ago. 

It's taken me way too long to learn that I am the only one that can let a label define me, if I want it to – and that it doesn't mean anything unless I let it. We, whatever we are, whatever we have, are indescribable and inexpressible and infinite.

(There is one label, however, one name that I'd like to put on you & me someday – a four-syllable, double-barrelled name which comes with a shiny gold ring and a promise. I've had the shiny gold ring for quite a while now, hidden at the back of my wardrobe underneath mountains of socks and various random crap. One day, when we're not planning a worldwide tour or doing any other of the crazy stuff that somehow makes up our crazy lives; I just might give it you.)

(After we get our dog, of course.)

You're nearly always the one to fall asleep first, and that means I lie alone with my thoughts, and we've already gathered that isn't always the healthiest thing for me to do. I still have those nights, however infrequently, where my stomach is heavier than a black hole and my self-awareness once again crashes over me like a tidal wave of fear because oh, the inevitability of death and the meaningless existence of the universe and why are we here and what is the point and-

-And then there's you, the radiant, beaming sun I have the pleasure of orbiting. I owe everything to you, and it's because of that I am truly the happiest I've ever been. You ground me; you bring me back down to earth in the moments I'm on the edge of floating away. 

You're the one to lie beside me when my face is pressed to the floor, the one to play video games with me at three am and the one to take over at those super important executive meetings we somehow get ourselves into when I'm about to implode from social ineptitude.

So yeah, I may not have had a best friend for the first eighteen years of my life, but that's okay. You were more than worth the wait. I don't say "I love you" nearly as often as I should, but every time you look at me in that way I am reminded of how much I don't need to; you already know.

You're nearly always the one to fall asleep first, and while it's normally sweet and calming, you've been leaning on my arm for almost two hours and now it's gone numb. The AC in our broom-cupboard sized tour-bus bedroom is currently broken meaning we may as well be sleeping beneath a bloody volcano, and the walls are paper thin meaning I'm pretty sure our security guards heard more than we may have wanted them too last night, judging by the awkward eye-contact I made this morning.

We're easily five thousand miles away from home and I'll admit I've had a night or two in these crazy three months, despite all the incredible crazy things we're doing, where I've missed it (yes, even the neighbour who still thinks my name is Rick). 

Even if we'll be coming home to a three foot thick layer of dust and a graveyard of houseplants, we'll be home, and I won't have to worry about looking at you in a certain way, and that will be more than enough.

But you know what? Right now, I couldn't care less where we are, because it's you that's sleeping on my arm. We could be on another planet and as long as you were beside me, with your ridiculous jokes, your infinite optimism and a smile that can make even the most withered plants bloom, I'd be okay. 

Wherever we may find ourselves in this crazy world, you are more of a home than any house I have ever lived in, and when you fall asleep beside me, calm and contented and free, it's now one of the only things that can ease me into sleep. And, even on those days when it can't, I get to lie awake and think of how lucky I am to have you. You are my home.

So, you're nearly always the one to fall asleep first, but it's okay.  
I don't really mind.


End file.
